City councillors have expressed concerns over Christchurch Airport pushing ahead with its proposed new airport at Tarras in Central Otago.
Christchurch City Council’s finance and performance committee cited potential climate-change impacts and costs as the focus of an amendment narrowly agreed to on Wednesday during a review of Christchurch City Holdings Ltd.
Seven councillors voted to add the committee's feedback to a draft statement of intent and six voted against it.
The committee also agreed to attach feedback from Sustainable Tarras, a group whose members neighbour the site of the proposed airport, to the draft document.
Opponents of the airport plan spoke to the committee, including Extinction Rebellion's Sara Campbell.
She told city councillors the decarbonisation of aviation is a major environmental hurdle and any expansion of the industry is a “terrible idea”.
The airport company, of which 75 per cent is owned by the city council under Christchurch City Holdings Ltd and the rest by the Crown, is set to meet the council soon to update it on the work at Tarras.
It comes after a Tarras farmer who described himself as "accommodating ... but stubborn" in 2020 changed his mind and sold land to Christchurch Airport.
In July 2020, it was reported Christchurch Airport had been buying up hundreds of hectares of farmland in Tarras, about 25 minutes’ drive from Cromwell, with the intention to one day build an international airport at the site.
Unlike the farmland next door, his old-school oasis had not been cleared of trees to allow for irrigation pivots.
It still had a ramshackle collection of elderly tractors and farm buildings, including a mud-brick teamster’s shed.
It was the last farm at Tarras to stop using draught horses and it was the second farm subdivided in 1882 from the giant Morven Hills Station, Mr Parcell said at the time.
His property was what remained of the much bigger sheep farm bought by his father John after he served five years in the desert in World War 2.
Yesterday, CIAL chief strategy and stakeholder officer Michael Singleton said the company had bought the property owned by Mr Parcell, next to the 750ha of land at the intersections of State Highway 8 and 8A it already owned.
The terms of the deal were confidential and Mr Parcell had asked media to respect his privacy.
He would be able to continue occupying the land, Mr Singleton said.
"We have a lot of work under way exploring the potential for the airport and were very happy for Philip to stay connected with his land in the interim.
"We haven’t made a decision on whether the project will proceed but the reality is any construction would be years away," he said.
Earlier this month, Mr Singleton said CIAL would in the coming weeks release information about where exactly it wanted the airport’s runway to be built.
— Staff reporter and Star News
